Vita and PS4 games 50% more expensive in Europe (or why and how I moved to a US PSN account)

I’m a French dude living in Japan. For a long time I’ve lived with 3 PSN accounts: one in France, one in the US, and one in Japan (also, recently, one in Brazil but that’s another story).

Having several PSN accounts is, in general, not convenient. I have bought games on all three accounts, and it’s a pain to switch. The PS3 and PS4 make it relatively easy with their profile system, but on the Vita it’s a nightmare to use different accounts.

I recently decided I had to choose one account and stick to it. I asked several friends online and in real life for their opinion, and it became clear to me that besides the obvious “I chose the PSN of my country because that was the default option”, people don’t put that much thought into their choice.

And yet they should: I decided to dig into “what would be the best logical PSN account for me to keep”, and what I found might convince you to think twice about it.

Of course, if you’re one of these people who “only” speak one language and have to stick to it, then your choice is limited. But if you happen to be reasonably fluent in English (or if English is actually your mother language but you don’t live in the US), you might strongly want to consider giving up your current PSN account and switch to a US account.

What I compared

As the main criteria for my decision, I decided to look at the prices of games on the PSN in various countries. It would be too much work to check all countries and all games, so I decided to focus on a comparison between the European and American PSN stores. I dismissed the Japanese store because the market in Japan is totally different, the games available are not the same, so the comparison did not make much sense to me. To get a reasonable sample, for Europe I looked at the prices in the UK and Germany.

As far as Vita games are concerned, I decided to take Kotaku’s “best 12 vita games” list and compare the prices of these twelve games. One of them was a PSM game, for which the PC PSN Store does not return any result, so I arbitrarily decided to replace it with Media Molecule’s recent hit Tearaway.

I also looked into the PS4, and chose a random list of 6 launch titles for the PS4, to compare their prices in the US, UK, and DE.

Finally, I also compared the prices of 1 year of Playstation Plus subscription.

The results

I was expecting tiny differences, maybe 5 to 10%. The type where I would need to be really of bad faith to convince anyone to switch from the convenience of their existing account to a US account. But in reality, I found that on average, Vita Titles are 35% more expensive in Europe than in the US. Playstation plus subscriptions are also about 30 to 35% more expensive in Europe, while PS4 games reach the “ripoff award of the year”: PS4 games are 51% more expensive in Europe than in the US, on average!

PSN Price comparisons in various locales as of Dec 04, 2013

To put things in perspective, it means that with the same amount of money, you can buy 3 PS4 games in the US, while you can only buy 2 in Europe. How do you like that 2 for the price of 3 promotion, Europe, enjoying it?

Although I haven’t dug too much in other countries, I peeked a bit at the Australian and Brazilian stores, and saw similar differences. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that US is by far cheaper than all other locales on the PSN.

First of all, it might be difficult or even impossible to buy anything on the PSN without a US Credit card or a US Paypal account. Honestly I don’t know if Sony still have regional restrictions on payment methods, but last time I tried to go directly through them several years ago, they did: they would reject my French credit card or my French paypal account on their US store.

The US PSN accepts those codes independently of your IP address, and this is how I buy most of my games today.

The Amazon technique above also works for Playstation plus subscriptions, but I found that the playstation plus codes on Amazon are subject to taxes. It is in that case more interesting to buy PSN Digital codes from Amazon, and use those codes to buy the PSN+ subscription directly from Sony.

Enjoying Video services

DNS redirection tools such as unblock-us exist that let me watch Netflix and Amazon Instant Video on my PS3, PS4, and Vita. These US-only services are awesome, have much more content and are much cheaper than their counterparts in the rest of the world. Again, that’s interesting only if you speak English fluently and are interested in (mostly) American dramas and movies. Personally, I love it. The process is explained below for each specific device:

Conclusion

Owning a US PSN account means I pay my games much cheaper, and get better content and services on my Playstation devices, for a lower price than in any of the European PSNs. So, I’ve made my choice. How about you? How expensive are games in your country? Have you ever considered switching?

Share

A message for gamers as the holiday season is here: Hey Folks, it is the shopping season and that means most of us will be buying gaming stuff in November and December. Wololo.net will be looking for the best deals and let you know about them. For example in July 2016, our twitter followers and mailing list subscribers were among the first to know about an Uncharted 4 Special edition deal for $19, a 75% discount at the time! Follow us on twitter to stay up to date. I also suggest to subscribe to our deals mailing list below for full deal updates. Note: this mailing list is mostly useful for people in the US.

Name:

Email:

We do not share your email with any third party

wololo

We are constantly looking for guest bloggers at wololo.net. If you like to write, and have a strong interest in the console hacking scene, contact me either with a comment here, or in a PM on /talk!

I am surprised that wolol.net gave the wrong idea that they are 50% expensive in Europe to me which mean its everything in Europe are expensive than in America. No. Some Europe like DE (Deutschland (Germany)) could be a little bit expensive for the games. Some are more affordable here in Europe than in America. Depending on where. like for an example, in Portugal because I was from Portugal. 🙂

Many American people do not understand the Europe. The European selection of free games PS+ is better than the US. Of course, they seems to get more retail games. American people needs to notice it.

Hi, i’m from Portugal i have a ps3 and the prices are the same here on PSN than in France and other EU countries probably. For example FIFA 15 and COD: Advanced Warfare will come out as 69€ . And at the US psn store will come out 59$ i think. So i think many of you know about gamesharing and i want to know if i can create a US account on my ps3 , use the amazon method to buy those 2 games from there and them play it on my main EU account… Because many of you are talking about changing from EU to US account and i don’t know why, i mean, just why don’t you use the US account to buy the game and then just play it in your normal account 🙂 Thanks for reading and if possible reply me i will come back tomorrow and after to see or just reply to my email.tpacers23@gmail.com

[…] many reasons you might want to use a US PSN account outside of the US. One of these reasons is that games in the US are up to 50% less expensive than in other countries. Unfortunately, it is somewhat difficult to purchase US games online or US PSN Codes outside of the […]

[…] year I published an article showing that PS4 and Vita games are about 50% more expensive in Europe than in the US. After doing the check this year, I can confirm this is still true. This year I am including Japan, […]

[…] Even if you live outside of the US, in general I strongly recommend that you get a US PSN account. Read here why. And you can buy US PSN Codes cheap from Amazon with this technique. So you don’t have to […]

Archives

Disclaimer: Wololo.net is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com